`JOKE' COP T-SHIRT HAS MAYOR CHAFING

When a few Chicago cops asked Pat Gutkoska back in January whether he planned to print a special T-shirt for the Democratic National Convention, he never thought it would come to this.

Calls and orders from all over the country. Bootlegs of his shirt sold on Chicago street corners next to bootleg Bulls shirts. Write-ups in the national press. Sellouts at police conventions. An angry activist creating his own version of the shirt, and city officials, all the way up to the mayor, expressing their displeasure.

"This started out as a joke, something the guys could laugh about," said Gutkoska, 46, owner of PDT Printing, 3532 W. 63rd St. "Now we can barely keep them in stock."

The shirt that has caused all the commotion is navy blue with white lettering that says, "We kicked your father's ass in 1968 . . . Wait 'til you see what we do to you." On the front it says "Chicago Police" and "Democratic National Convention Chicago--1996."

It refers to the violence between cops and demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. This August, Chicago will host its first major national political convention since that tumultuous event.

Gutkoska says he has sold more than 2,000 of the shirts, mostly to wholesalers who are reselling them nationwide.

The shirts were so popular at a recent Washington, D.C., police convention that when a Washington newspaper tried to do a story on them, the only shirt the paper could find to photograph was a bootleg version.

The shirt has been a hot item at City Hall, with cops, reporters, politicos, staffers and others buying them. But Mayor Richard Daley isn't too happy. He dislikes any mention of the troubled 1968 convention.

Police say privately that the mayor has let their bosses know that any police officer found selling or wearing the shirt will be disciplined.

Asked whether the discipline scare is real, Daley at first shrugged, then offered a cryptic answer.

But Gutkoska says he didn't mean the shirt as anything but a joke. He says Daley and others who don't like them have taken them the wrong way--too seriously.

"The cops come in here and laugh," Gutkoska said. "This is not in any way putting down the cops or the city. We have guys who are second- or third-generation Chicago cops who are coming in and buying the convention shirts for their fathers and grandfathers."

Gutkoska's shirt caught the attention of Andrew Hoffman, son of the late radical and 1968 convention demonstrator Abbie Hoffman. Hoffman, who plans to be in Chicago to lead counterculture demonstrations during this summer's convention, took the shirt personally, believing that it was a specific reference to him and his father.

So Hoffman created his own version, which he intends to use to promote his Festival of Life activities this summer.

Gutkoska was 18 during the 1968 convention, a self-described "freak" who opposed the Vietnam War.

"If you would have told me in 1968 that I would be selling this shirt to the police, I wouldn't have believed you," he said. "But this is for fun. What is Chicago famous for? Gangsters, crooked politicians, 1968 and now the Bulls. You should take what you've got and run with it."